PostHistoric
by FrontlineWire
Summary: Post-history. Meaning time machines, and therefore, no timezone. Dinosaurs thrive with humans and the like. Despite time not existing, though, criminal adventures still do.
1. One

_This has nothing to do with movies. I just can't wrap my brain around why they don't have a 'dinosaur' category. You could say this is a fanfic of Jurrasic Park, but it isn't. It isn't even in the Jurrasic period. I just happen to love dinosaurs. A lot of words and not much definition. Good luck._

* * *

Hoards of them; all swarming everywhere. Moschops, that is. The end of the Permian period. These were the "cattle" of the Paleozoic era. They weren't the only kind, though; herds of Estemmenosuchus Uralensis and Estemmenosuchus Miriabilis were both prized for their unique skulls. Moschops was my first prehistoric reptile, but I favored my brother's farm of Uralensis over the former. One of the many in his herd took a liking to potatoes. I named him Solanum, for the first half of the scientific name for the potato; Solanum Tuberosum.

* * *

Now, fast forward to the very beginnings of the Mesozoic era, when the Permian period is slowly coming to an end, and you are where I am right now, working on my brother's latest farm of Efraasia dinosaurs, ranging from charcoal grey to dusty brown. Jack- my brother's friend of fifteen years- helped me dig a watering hole for the herbivores. A line of sweat glistened down his broad, tanned forehead, as he stretched in the mid-afternoon sun. His shirt rode up to reveal chiseled abs, sculpted from years of wrangling Eocursor, which was not an easy task. I remembered asking my brother when I was only seven, why Eocursor dinosaurs existed in the late Permian period, when the earliest fossil records were in the late Triassic period. He'd laughed a bit and told me I'd learn in school.  
"Done yet?" Jack panted. His side of the hole was a total of three feet deep, five feet wide and four feet long. Mine was a mere one and a half feet deep, four feet long and two feet wide. "Seems you've been daydreaming again." He observed, as I dug my shovel deeper into the somewhat soft ground. I shrugged in response as he moved over to help me with my half.  
"How long you two been out here?" A voice suddenly said from behind me.  
"'Bout an hour." I answered, then turned around to face my father; only in his late twenties. "Where's Keith?"  
My father jutted his thumb in the direction of our stucco-style house. Different kinds of prehistoric plant grew around it, shading it from the sun, and wild flowers bloomed in the sills of casement-style windows. The landscaping complimented the soft caramel/toffee colour of the house. I liked that the pasture our herd was kept in was in front and to the right of our home, which gave it a Jurassic Park kind of look. It was placed next to an overhanging cliff, with a sheer drop of almost ninety degrees, so that you could see all the layers of rock as water had eroded them. The right side of the house hugged the cliff, and the left gave view of a lush valley, where large Dicynodonts sometimes passed through. They weren't worth much where I lived, but in other places in Pangaea, they were worth as much as what my house cost.  
I shook my head, realizing I was dreaming in broad daylight again and set down my shovel briefly to take a drink of water. I was interrupted by a, "The races are tomorrow."  
My father shook his head dismissively. "Boys your age bet too much money on those things. You remember Isaac? He betted"-  
"Two thousand and lost. I know, I know." Jack said stubbornly. It was something he did in his free time; watched and betted on the speediest dinosaurs, which were usually the smaller, lighter, bird-like animals. Jack's was a medium-sized Ornithomimus, whom he named Radheid, which meant 'speed' in Dutch. He'd gotten him in town from another friend in the racing business. I'd always wanted to go with Jack to the races. Not because I liked seeing peoples bet on dinosaurs that were all equally able to win, but because I liked being surrounded by the many brightly colored stucco buildings in the town of Sonbaie. It meant- in a twisted sort of way- 'many suns' in African. Or whatever language that was. I couldn't remember. History 101 was my least favourite class, though it was nice hearing about dinosaurs from the previous periods, like Dimetrodon, which was commonly hunted for the bright, big sail on its back.  
"Neil!" Jack snapped me out of my thoughts. Again. "You done staring into space? Help me with this." He said as he threw me a bucket to fill with water. I trudged down to the well, lined with thick bricks all shades of grey and white and tan. I personally liked the well. It was peaceful; hidden by a wall of Pannaulika Triassica plants, sitting atop the moss-like Tortilicaulis. I leaned over the edge of the wall. Yep, still about thirty-four feet deep. I hooked the bucket to the rope and pulled on the other end, sending it down, then once I heard the familiar drowned "clunk", brought it back up, only to head back to the pasture, and then back to the well to repeat the process. This carried on until the pond was half-full and Jack took over. I flopped down in the grass and leaned against a Taxodium Distichum; a futuristic cypress, with sagging branches and leaves. This one was particularly large, but did no job of shading me from the sun. I moved to the porch and watched Jack and my dad bicker about if the fencing should be replaced. It was made of adobe at the moment. Please. As if that could hold in a herd of ornery Eocursor. I'd suggested to my father to change it to a sturdy brick with wood reinforcements, but he denied, saying it was too much money. That made me wonder; if his annual income came from "dinosaur-sitting" for at least seven hundred for a small one, how come he couldn't afford a wall that cost about six hundred? He was just uptight. "An impulsive saver", Keith always put it. Speaking of Keith;  
"Bro!" I yelled into the windows that lined the entire front wall of the kitchen, facing north towards the pasture for his animals.  
He replied with a sleepy, "Yeah?"  
"Can you take me into town today?" I peered in and saw him lazily pouring a cup of hot coffee, and putting two pieces of bread in the toaster-oven.  
"Sure," he nodded. "But only if you buy something for me."  
I grunted, knowing that was the only way he would do anything for me. Lucky for me though, he only asked for slightly expensive things, knowing I wasn't working a job and didn't have much money.  
"How much you get done?" he asked, sitting next to me on the clean porch swing, taking a loud sip of his coffee.  
"We're filling it with water now," I answered, forgetting that the 'we' was actually just Jack doing most of the work for me, my poor fifteen-year-old self. "And dad's gonna plant some new trees along the edges."  
"You ask him about the fence?"  
I nodded. "He said he might consider it, but I think it'd go better with the trees he's going to plant."  
"What kind?" he said through a mouthful of nearly-burnt toast with crunchy peanut butter.  
"Cherry blossom. They're from the twenty-first century."  
He swallowed. "That's odd. Since when is he able to afford a tree that later in the timeline over a simple brick wall?"  
I shrugged. "You know how he is."  
"Stubborn old man…" Keith muttered around his last bite of toast. He gulped his coffee down and set the mug on the swing, standing and stretching. "C'mon, I wanna buy a necklace for Jade."  
"Sure," I answered, Jade being his current girlfriend of three months. He kept them for about that long and then got bored, the bastard. "Lemme get my shoes." I hurried inside, the kitchen to my right with its veria white granite countertops and aromatic cedar cabinets, the living room to my left; the carpet reminded me of wool. My mother had told me the colour was called 'Sound of Silence', which sounded like a pretty stupid name to me. The furniture was a mix of twenty-first century modern and Spanish. Thud.  
"Thud?" I rubbed my head. "Oh…" in my daydreaming about cabinets and carpet and countertops, I'd run smack into _Reaper_ by Vincent Van Gough. I straightened the painting and slipped on a pair of worn brown boots. So what if they were Gucci? You couldn't tell by how nasty they looked. When my mother bought them for me, she said they were the "alternative to biker boots", but to me they just looked like woman's ankle boots with a men's label slapped on the bottom. I stepped quickly across the carpeted floor to the front door, knowing I had probably taken more time than necessary.  
"You're late." Keith scolded me with a flick to the ear as I crossed our very large, clean front lawn to the plaustrum. That's 'wagon' or 'cart' or, on occasion, 'Big Dipper' in Latin, which was what I called it. Big Dipper, that is. I climbed in the plaustrum and leaned against the back board, as my brother clambered up the steps to the driver's seat and started up Ol' Rusty. Ol' Rusty being the Iguanodon that had been passed down from my father to Keith, who was given the delightful job of pulling our heavy selves through the thick grass to the road that led east to Sonbaie. The path was large, but at a fourty-five degree angle, so any dinosaur pulling a load of at least six tons would have a hard time. Lucky for Ol' Rusty, he'd lived a life of less than two thousand pounds, but that didn't support his name. No one really used his real name- long forgotten by now-; instead we called him what we did because he was diagnosed with premature arthritis as a juvenile. I'd learned by now that human diseases and disorders could also be apparent in dinosaurs, thanks to one idiot- a Gary Busy, at that- who decided an "intimate physical relationship" with his Lesothosaurus was necessary. And look where we are now; dinosaurs with PTSD.

* * *

_ I'll try not to make it too boring as I go along, but the word-count will remain high, and dialogue will be minimal. Even though I hate reading stories exactly like this one. =__="_


	2. Two

_Whoa. The point where the climax starts in this story comes way too early. So far, chap. 1 is 3 pages in Word and chap. 2 is 3.5. Damn. Whatever. _

* * *

Inside town, sellers and buyers were busy with each other, as others tried to make it around the bustling crowd. Sonbaie held about 17,000 people alone, and the houses and smaller businesses around it carried about 4,000 more. We weren't any small-town folk. I continued to rant to no one in particular in my head as Keith directed Ol' Rusty into a small parking slot, located in front of a dinosaur feeding and health shop. He hoped down and paid one hundred to the guard standing in front of him. "Taxes," Keith had always called them. I jumped down from my seat and joined him, but not for a moment before he was off in all directions, going left, then right, then straight for a while, then right for a longer while, then left down a narrow alley that led to a door on the right. It was a tall Victorian-style wooden door that my brother took some time to push open. He stepped inside and I followed him up the winding staircase to the immediate left of the small alcove inside, going up what seemed to me like four stories. We arrived at a final small floor in the cylindrical tower, where two doors faced us. He went left, and I went right.  
Inside the room, I found a line of at least fifteen desks where moody librarians shuffled through rustic-looking paperwork. Behind them were rows upon rows upon rows and more and more rows of books. To my left were the round computers run by Endurance, a company inspired by- what else- dinosaurs. The screens of the technology were large and round and circular, exposed to the hawk-like eyes of the women and men who ran the place. I quickly made my way to the other side of the room, noticing a scrawny, crow-like woman eyeing me from beneath her wire-rimmed spectacles. I browsed and leafed through various books, some from the past and some from much further ahead in the future. I pulled one out, titled _Wuthering Heights_, and flipped it open to a random page. Before I could finish the first paragraph I was hooked. I sat down at a table by the Victorian-style windows, where a woven basket with red cloth inside revealed warm rustic rolls. I took one and chomped into it, closing the book and reopening it to the first page. Before I knew it, two hours had passed, and my eyes were watering and dry. I set the book down a moment and rubbed my eyes. When I opened them again, a skeleton leaned towards me. I shrieked and covered my mouth, realizing I was supposed to be silent.  
"You're late." Keith said to me ominously. "Again."  
I nodded. "You scared the shit out of me!" and screamed/whispered. "Can I finish this book?"  
Keith observed the two-hundred pages I'd already read, out of three-hundred twenty. "Just buy it." He answered simply.  
I dug in my pocket, pulling out a small burlap sack that held my currency. Each item of money was a small circular piece of stone, with its amount engraved into it. It was easy to mimic- anyone could do it- but for an odd reason the crime rate was only two percent. I counted the little stone discs in my hand. "Ten…twenty…thirty…four…I have…" I rolled the money around in my palm, as if unsure. "Thirty-six."  
"That's enough. The book is only five."  
"Okay." I stood and paid to the crow woman who'd scared me earlier, and hustled out eagerly.

* * *

Keith took me to a small market to find his necklace. He led me around small colourful huts to a large one hidden between two buildings. It reminded me of a gypsy, which was exactly what I saw inside. She was a short, Mediterranean beauty; only five and a fourth feet, with sea green irises and lips that reminded me of plums. While my brother browsed through the assorted jewelry to the far left, I observed the woman sitting behind the register- a tin box with different sized slots inside. Things inside Sonbaie were dated previous to the houses outside. I liked the cultural differences inside the city. So many things to look at all at once. Surprisingly, though, tourism was rated low. I supposed it was because the city was located in one of the more remote areas in Pangaea, where dinosaurs were often found roaming wild, instead of in places like Isla de Muchas- which meant Island of Many- where they were kept in small pens. It was located- I'd learned- where a place called 'Spain' would be, when Pangaea split into separate continents billions of years later.  
As my brother continued to browse like he had all the time in the world, I began to get hungry, despite the snack I'd had earlier in the library. I tried to ignore it, but failed when a large grumble erupted from the pit of my stomach. I held my hand to my abdomen and froze, stupidly thinking that if I didn't move I could blend in with my background. Doing so in vain, I looked to my brother for support. He rolled his grey eyes and laid a thin chain on the counter in front of the gypsy woman that had intrigued me so much when I entered the hut. She sighed huffily and took his money, moving her wrist in a circular clockwise motion, her fingers stretching behind her, mumbling "Which one ya want?"  
Keith pointed to a swirling mud brown mixture inside a crystal ball the size of my thumbnail. In the center was an ominous black hole, like the ones seen in space. If I looked hard, I could even see tiny suns being sucked inside.  
The gypsy lady reached back and lifted the sphere out of its resting place and dropped it in a tiny deep blue pouch. "Attachin' the crystal to the chain's gonna cost extra." I noticed my brother hold out his hand beneath the gypsy's eyesight towards me. He knew it was illegal to have others pay for your items. He wiggled his fingers anxiously, knowing someone had to be watching, and I handed him my burlap pouch of money. He acted like he'd just pulled it out of his pocket and placed it on the table before the woman. She eyed it like it was a dead bird. I saw a grimace creep across her mouth as she dumped out its contents onto the table. She counted out each piece of stone on her fingers, pausing at thirty. "Ya got one? You're short one."  
"Damn…" I heard my brother growl to himself as he dug out a piece of stone for the woman. She sneered and took the money, tossing him the pouch, obviously only caring about the money.  
"That cost all of what I had!" I near shouted at my brother, who replied with a vacant shrug.  
"That's life, kid." He tussled my hair, which he knew I hated, as I grimaced and pulled away. We reached Ol' Rusty- happily grazing on the vegetation his stall-keeper provided- and climbed in the cart. Keith started him up and backed out of the space, nearly running into a Corythosaurus. The dinosaur let out a bellow and flinched, nearly knocking its wagon over. The driver shook a fist at Keith, and Keith only shot back with curses and nasty words. The world of dinosaur-cart-wealth ratio worked like this; depending on the type of dinosaur pulling your plaustrum a person could determine how wealthy you were. From least wealthy to most; Iguanodon, Saurolophus, Corythosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Lambeosaurus. Basically, wealth was based on the detail of your dinosaur's head. I thought the system was whack, but I did appreciate seeing an occasional Lambeosaurus, with its forward-pointing hollow crest and bony spike pointing backwards. I remembered seeing one up to sixteen point five meters long! That was the most amazing thing since Moschops. Most of them were about nine meters long; a more convenient size for being in the crowded city and pulling cramped carts.  
A jolt from the cart shook me from my ever-frequent thoughts. I looked up at the sky; when was that asteroid supposed to hit and kill all the dinosaurs again? "It's way too early in the Mesozoic era for that to happen," Keith had told me once. I still wondered though. How could something that small kill dinosaurs all the way on the other side of the earth? They probably died from inhaling the debris from the impact years after it happened. Yeah, that was it. Except those damn giant alligators; Sarcosuchus, they were called. Why'd they live? 'Course I'd heard stories from the future about a live Plesiosaurus somewhere in what was to be called 'Scotland'. Or maybe it was 'England.' Anyway, she was called Nessy or "The Lochness Monster". Monster? Please, spare me from your ignorant views on a Plesiosaur. Of course, sharks survived as well, but they got significantly smaller, just like everything else. Sarcosuchus would go from 11.2 to 12.2 meters all the way down to a mere 4 meters. And humans- since the age of the caveman- had grown taller and more intelligent. The works of God? Well, not necessarily. I wonder why, if this "God" dude made "Adam" and "Eve", did he not make a pair of dinosaurs? Why does this guy only favour humans? My belief- or, that is, my lack of belief for God- is that human intelligence has created this guy in the sky in desperation for knowledge, or for something to believe in. "There has to be a divine being that made humans happen!" I remember a girl in my school saying once. And there is a "divine being" that made all this happen, and its name is Evolution. Man could have evolved from ape, but Hemicyclaspis were just about the first prehistoric beings to have had a sort of memory, which suggests that humans got their memories from fish, not monkeys. So…man evolved from fish? Doubt it. My point is, however man evolved, it was definitely not by some invisible man in the sky.  
"Done thinkin'?" Keith inquired, focused on the road ahead.  
I nodded, knowing he couldn't see me unless he turned around. "Yup."  
"Good. We're going to find Scutosaurus."  
I sat up straighter. "Are you crazy?!" Scutosaurus lived in the barren deserts east of where we were; almost one-hundred thousand miles. Ol' Rusty could barely make it to Sonbaie. No way could he carry us all the way to the herds of Scutosaurus. "Why?!"  
"Jack needs a couple delivered to his friend. You remember Caltha, right?"  
"Ya mean Marigold?" I easily translated her name from Latin to English. Now, one thing I was good at was language translation, whether I spoke it or not. "That blue-haired twat doesn't need Scutosaurus from all the way across the continent! She can get something else that's, oh I don't know, in the damn area?!"  
Keith twisted around in his seat and slowed a bit. "Jack told me this morning that the herds are moving west. They should be about seventy miles from here. That'll take us about a month and a half if Rusty's in good condition," he added as if it was a threat, "which he is."  
"Still…" I hesitated. "Scutosaurus are stubborn, and they're in the frickin' desert. Getting two in the Dipper'd be hard without injury, and wouldn't Ol' Rusty be worn out enough? He wouldn't be able to make it back."  
Keith sat still for a moment, and our Iguanadon sensing the tension between us, stopped as well. I saw him moving his tongue around in his mouth, contemplating my resistance. His eyes darted around, and when they ended up back at mine, he simply said, "You're coming with."

* * *

_Neil is somewhat of a bitch. As is Keith. Hell, I'm a bitch. It makes sense. **IMPORTANT**: Post in the reviews if you want me to post links to pictures of the dinosaurs here. **ALSO IMPORTANT**: Yaoi. EVERYONE is doing it. This may have it later on. If I'm nice enough, and someone writes a review. -__- Bleh. Hopefully I'll get more traffic that way too. If I'm lucky. _


	3. Three

_I should post this on Fictionpress, shouldn't I? Well, not that anyone's listening to me. ...Who the hell am I talking to anyway?_

* * *

"But it's not fair!" I protested. "I don't want to go!"  
My father sat menacingly at the other end of our dining room table, arms crossed like his mind. "Why don't you want to go? It's a great opportunity to bond with your brother."  
My eyes bulged. "Because it's seventy-two miles!!" I shrieked as if my dad asked me to stick my head in manure and be happy about it. "Who gives a shit if they're migrating west it's still a long ways away! And anyway Ol' Rusty can't carry us that far!" I paused, realization hitting my head like a brick. I said more calmly, "Can't Keith go by himself or with Jack?"  
Keith shook his head from his standing position left of my father. "Jack's got more business to deal with here. You know Caltha's letting him stay at her place because he can't afford his own place?" I shook my head unnecessarily at this, but my brother continued without notice, "He's extremely busy. And I need someone else to go with me."  
"I'm only twelve," I said, feeling their determination wearing me down to the bone. "I can't just skip school and risk my life on a two-month trip for two mere Scutosaurus."  
"Don't act like you know everything." My father scolded. He used that every time he disliked my tone. Which was most of the time we talked like this, actually. "I've already spoken to the school about your absence, and they approve with six month's time." Before I could scream again he added, "Many other students are doing the same to find other dinosaur species elsewhere in Pangaea."  
"But that isn't why I'm taking you; because most of the other students are leaving." My brother interrupted. That was suspicious to me, as most of the time Keith let my dad talk and talk about nothing in particular. "House rules" my father called it.  
"I…do approve of your brother taking you east to find Scutosaurus," my dad said like nothing had happened. "I encourage it highly. It could be a bonding opportunity, as well as a chance for you to experience eastern Pangaea first-hand. You'd be given plenty of supplies for the trip, as well as improved transportation. Keith is well-aware of the dangers, and I'm sure you know your brother has been trained in survival classes?"  
I nodded. "I know. I just…it's sudden. Out of the blue. Why now instead of planning?"  
I saw a flash of guilt and sorrow in both my dad's and my brother's eyes. Did this have some deeper meaning than what was being laid out on the table for me? Like an ace card hidden up someone's sleeve, with only a jack and an eight on the table. I began to panic inside my mind, but only until my father answered, "The herds are moving quickly. No doubt the minute they reach their closest destination west they'll start dispersing east and south again."  
"Well…" I racked my brain for a good excuse not to go. Like maybe, "My face is falling off and therefore I'll probably get a really bad sunburn and sunburns are uncomfortable so I'd end up being unhappy and arguing with my brother 24/7 and it'd be a miserable trip and I'd probably set loose the captured Scutosaurus in a fit of anger, stupidly and ignorantly ruining the trip even more until I eventually had to go to suicide-prevention-therapy (SPT for short) but end up killing myself anyway." Of course, my face was (unfortunately and fortunately) not falling off, so that one was out. Then, a sort of masochistic idea spawned in my brain; why not hack off my arm? Then I wouldn't have to go! Wait, that's even worse than the first plan… I rubbed the knots out of my brow-line and forehead, glaring at the table, until my brother spoke.  
"You can sleep on it, and that's it." I looked up. "But…you'll be expected to have a 'yes' answer in the morning."  
And that was that.

* * *

Nest day, I woke with a sense of nausea. I rolled over away from the door to avoid my brother- in vain. He made a show of swinging open the door and practically yelling "Good morning, brother!" very mechanically and mockingly. I could smell he had made my favourite; scrambled Therizinosaurus eggs with a white gravy sauce and biscuits made with Leptoceratops fertilizer- it's the only kind of biscuit I eat. I begrudgingly hurled myself into an upright position and stabbed a piece of egg with my fork. Keith didn't stick around to watch me eat; that I was at least a little glad about. Despite being reluctant to get out of bed, I inhaled my breakfast and sat back again, full and ready to go back to sleep. Not before my very annoying father burst into my room, though, screaming to get my lazy ass out of bed or I wouldn't be going at all. I smirked into my pillow. "Then maybe I should stay in if it means I can't go?"  
"Get out, _now._" He urged.  
"Sheesh, where's the damn fire…?" I grumbled and yanked myself out of bed before I could convince myself otherwise, throwing on a vintage green turtleneck Keith had given me a few months ago over a white T-shirt and a pair of torn white jeans. I'd managed to pack some things last night as well; three un-read books along with _Decoding Dinosaurs_, six other shirts, two sweaters, seven pairs of jeans and two jackets, as well as the last box of Zebra Cakes and Cinnamon buns. Keith greeted me out front, topless, in a pair of gnarled sweats. At my dad's command, he went inside and washed his face and hands, while I clambered into the back of the Dipper. I folded my arms together and chewed the inside of my cheek; brows knitted together in a furious almost-uni-brow. Didn't my father say we'd be provided with "improved transportation"? I would have figured he would have gotten rid of Ol' Rusty. Euthanizing a dinosaur was illegal- so obviously he couldn't do that-, as was killing one for any other purpose than profit. For example, Therizinosaurus is prized for its meat and eggs. The two-and-a-half-foot claws are also used as weapons and jewelry. Another one- Dimetrodon- is sold for the sail on its back, which can range from a brown- green to a rustic red. As well as Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus also had a sail that turned a brilliant blue and yellow when the dinosaur needed to confuse a predator. Oh, I almost didn't mention that, along with Moschops, Edaphosaurs were used as cattle. Cutting of their (or a Dimetrodon's) sail was supposed to be painful, but did not affect the animal except for heating and cooling. Without their sails they were used as riding animals, or to pull small wagons. I felt a sudden sting in my cheek, and tasted blood. In my thinking I had bit through the flesh on the inside of my mouth. I let the taste linger there and then swallowed, looking up at the seemingly always clear blue sky. This is what it was like in and around Sonbaie; always sunny and bright and blue, with only a few white puffy clouds. I knew it'd be different once I left. Once I left… I didn't like the thought of that. But, I reassured myself, it was only for two months.  
"Yeah, "only" two months…" I grumbled, watching my brother load giant burlap bags of greens and bread and meat onto the Dipper. I noticed I was sitting atop a sack that took up half of the twenty-eight by eighteen foot wagon, labeled "Feed". Along with that were two one-hundred pound bags of meat, one seventy-pound bag of bread, one thirty-pound bag of hay, two hundred-pound barrels of water and assorted fifty-pound bags of other things like cheese, stones, spices and sauces, fruits and vegetables, and my one smaller duffle bag. In all, our 3.1 ton Iguanadon would be dragging around a little less than two tons for two months. "How unfair…"  
"How what?" Keith asked, climbing into the driver's seat and facing me.  
"Unfair." I repeated. "The poor thing'll be exhausted after a few weeks."  
Keith shook his head like I knew nothing. "We're going to switch out with a Parasaurolophus in three weeks and then switch again with a Lambeosaurus. When we come back we'll switch two more times to get our Rusty again."  
"Huh." It didn't sound like much of an "improved transportation" method, but at least our less-than-average-sized Iguanadon wouldn't have to carry us the whole way.  
My brother lay his head down on the wood of the wagon and closed his eyes. He looked more like he was thinking than resting. "We should get going." He said quietly. I nodded, though I was reluctant to. I would miss the house. The well. The Efraasia. The cherry trees and the walls. Especially the beautiful city of Sonbaie. People came from all around to see it, and yet half of the people who lived in or around it didn't even give it a second glance.  
"Wait!" I shouted, though my brother was only turning around to face forward. I bolted inside the house, nearly scaring my father out of his jeans and took the steps two at a time. I rammed into my room, scuffling around and digging through piles of junk. Since when did my room get so messy? It was so sudden, though the mess had probably been there for weeks. As I threw crusty shirts I forgot existed from my closet, I finally found what I was looking for and grabbed it from behind a shoe box, emptied the box and stuffed the item inside, then got a charger, memory card and ran down the stairs at a slower place. I realized I was starting to care less that I was going to be living in a plaustrum for the next two months. Damn.  
"What did you get?" Keith asked as I climbed back in. before I could answer he'd already gotten Rusty moving at a steady pace. I saw my father come out of the house and wave dramatically like in those early black and white movies. I waved back and gave him an air hug, even if the old brute could get on my nerves sometimes…  
I waved the shoe box in front of my brother and pulled out the camera, snapping two pictures of Sonbaie, and then one of me and Keith, him holding the reins and looking confused and me with a huge, totally fake grin on my face. Then I turned the camera off and placed it carefully in the box with the charger and card, closed the lid and set it in the cart next to me. I leaned back against the edge and closed my eyes, letting my neck allow my head to hang nearly upside-down over the edge of the wagon, staring into the blazing sun. Blazing wasn't the right word… bright, yellow, was more like it. Yellow like the lemons that grew in my make-shift garden when I was ten. Yellow like the colour the inside of my lids were when I closed my eyes and faced towards a fire; the right lights illuminating the inside of my mind. The yellow of the sun reminded me of Yellow by Coldplay, or One Armed Scissor by At the Drive-In, or maybe a mix of both. Anyway, I liked that yellow. I loved that yellow. Even the word, if you pronounced it real slow…yellow…

* * *

_Yellow is one of my favorite words, along with 'wedge'. Wedge...I dunno, I like certain words. Also, 'frecuentemente,' spanish for 'frequently'. I'll end this author note with more begging for reviews (Dude, Review-Puppy is DIEING. FEED HIM or forever be dubbed a puppy killer.) and the thought of turning this into a yaoi, even though it was never supposed to have even a smidgen of it in the first place._

_I like that word too...smidgen..._


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